Adventure:-- LPNN (Manzanita Judging)

[Vargo]

"I, too, think chasing them is a bad idea. We should find a defensible position, do without the fire for the night, and try to avoid them as much as possible."

Vargo puts his survival skills to the test, looking for a small outcropping of sorts, or even better an abandoned cave, something that the group can hide under. He also does his best to conceal the tracks of the party, instructing them to lay down false trails, etc.

(Survival +10, Knowledge (Nature) +9)

 

[Rystil Arden]

"We won't have any advantage if we should try to catch them in a pitch black forest now, instead of being healed and prepared for their return later.", Almayce says. "But I expect them to get back. Unfortunately they might not do so alone, but it will take time if they decide to fetch allies.", he continues.

"We can only hope they are stupid enough to go fetch allies--let's face it, we still need rest now and are missing key spells, whereas the rats lost worthless meat shields only. If they come back again with another crossbow ambush before our rest is done, we will likely be dead. This one, for one, will be slain most of the time by a single bolt. If they are moronic enough to spend a day to go fetch friends, then yes, we agree, we will be fine."

"Clearly, however, it has been decided not to follow. So now either we die, or the rats are idiots. Either way,this one will need to rest an additional hour--not to mention being unable to recover this one's power reserves for eight hours."

 

[Xael]

"You're overestimating them and underestimating us. They couldn't manage kill us in this first ambush, so what makes you think they can do any better in the second one? A few less spells on our side? Which particular spells of mass destruction did we use that are crucial to our survival? A pathetic cantrip, few healing spells - which I'm not running out any time soon - and a weak slow-down spell. And whatever you did.", Almayce says, his voice drifting more and more to sarcastic direction and growing somewhat louder. "The only way to insult this group more would have been to call us all incompetent fools. I haven't seen anyone fight as madly and take so many hits as the dwarf standing over there, and he was unarmored. I don't need to conduct a divination to see that the rest of the group is more that competent to hold their ground against a couple of overgrown man-rats. And in the unlikely case you'd drop to the ground with a crossbow bolt or two sticking out of your chest, I'll be glad to dispel your completely irrational belief of imminent and inevitable death by healing you back to your feet to watch these people cleave a couple of rat heads off some furry shoulders."

"I find your lack of faith disturbing.", Almayce snaps and shakes his head in disbelief. "Are we going somewhere or do we stay here?", he continues to the rest of the group, sounding somewhat angry.

OOC: Almayce doesn't like unnecessary pessimism, as you might have noticed. But at least I got the opportunity to quote Darth Vader. Not sure if it's correct word-to-word but...

 

[Rystil Arden]

Almayce doesn't like unnecessary pessimism

(OOC: Dude, unnecessary pessimism? Look, we lost our only rage, leaving the barbarian fatigued, all my PsP (especially wasted are the buffs that I still had up for several rounds if we had pursued), all your 1st-level spells except one, and all Vargo's 1st-level spells except one. They lost two(?) hit points and a group of useless rats that were basically just a distraction. If they attack again with us in this state, waiting for us to go back to sleep and set up watch, first of all we could be dead before we all wake up: two crossbow shots from surprise, on average, will defeat anyone but Raz or Ogrin, and now that they know who the casters are, on average they should be able to easily have Almacye and Vargo both knocked out the first round after the surprise round, which could be before anyone can react if they win initiative. And second, even if we do wake up, we're in deep trouble... let's not forget their DR 10/silver, which means that only the fatigued barbarian or a very lucky Ogrin sneak attack can hurt them at all except on a critical. Unless the rats get some really terrible rolls, I'm not seeing us surviving another surprise crossbow ambush in this state. Particularly, I ran several such sample combats assuming the wererats are level 1 human warriors--the easiest kind around, and in all of them, we all died, though one of the times we knocked out one of the wererats thanks to a lucky x3 critical from Raz)

 

[Xael]

OOC: Dude, unnecessary pessimism?

OOC: Shortly put: Yes, completely unnecessary. I don't consider the odds to be anywhere near as bad as you make them sound to be.

 

[Rystil Arden]

OOC: Shortly put: Yes, completely unnecessary. I don't consider the odds to be anywhere near as bad as you make them sound to be.

(OOC: Care to let me in on our secret weapon then? I'd really like to know because I consider Zaeryl to be a cocky character, though not cocky to the point of stupidity, so it should be somewhat telling that even Zaeryl considers death inevitable if the rats return. So if it is so easy for us to win, please let me know how because if you are right, then due to my own inability to understand the game rules, I am roleplaying my character incorrectly. Thanks )

 

[Xael]

(OOC: Care to let me in on our secret weapon then? I'd really like to know because I consider Zaeryl to be a cocky character, though not cocky to the point of stupidity, so it should be somewhat telling that even Zaeryl considers death inevitable if the rats return. So if it is so easy for us to win, please let me know how because if you are right, then due to my own inability to understand the game rules, I am roleplaying my character incorrectly. Thanks )

OOC:
1. 2 vs 8.
2. Rasereit shouldn't be no longer fatiqued when they come back, unless they're damn fast.
3. You're starting from the point that they a) surprise us, b) hit, c) manage to do enough damage to drop us fast enough. I doubt all of those.
4. Only Rasereit actually needs to be able to deal damage. The rest of the party trips, grapples (pins) and otherwise harasses them and he finishes them off. There's four of us for each one, and by the friggin' laws of averages, they're not going to make every one of their rolls. We're not fighting He-Man you know.

And if that's not safe enough for you, we can just turn off the lights, and sit & sleep in the dark, and they'll be having damn hard time finding us.

But maybe it's just that the fighting against CR 3 monsters (with DR) with first level characters in my other character's last adventure (Rasereit was there) has made me overly optimistic, even though we had fights where characters were downed six friggin' times in a one fight and we won. :\

 

[Rystil Arden]

And if that's not safe enough for you, we can just turn off the lights, and sit & sleep in the dark, and they're be having damn hard time finding us.

(OOC: They have Scent. If we have a light, then they can just stand at max crossbow range and fire twice from the darkness like last time. On average, they will hit us, even if we are prone. Two hits, on average, will take out any of us but Ogrin and Raz, and just barely Juliana. If they can take out Almayce on surprise and Vargo on round 1, then they can retreat and use hit-and-run as many times as necessary to kill us all before we can revive those two. If we don't have a light, they use Scent and only Raz has Darkvision (but he'll be resting to recover from fatigue.)

 

[Xael]

(OOC: They have Scent. If we have a light, then they can just stand at max crossbow range and fire twice from the darkness like last time. On average, they will hit us, even if we are prone. Two hits, on average, will take out any of us but Ogrin and Raz, and just barely Juliana. If they can take out Almayce on surprise and Vargo on round 1, then they can retreat and use hit-and-run as many times as necessary to kill us all before we can revive those two. If we don't have a light, they use Scent and only Raz has Darkvision (but he'll be resting to recover from fatigue.)

OOC:
1. Scent isn't blindsight or darkvision. They can do it from 15-60ft away, and find the DIRECTION of us. They would be shooting to darkness themselves, quessing squares and taking 50% miss chance should they accidentally quess correctly and hit.
2. Vargo's wolf has scent.
3. Rasereit can stay up. He doesn't need to rest to recover from the fatique.
4. Average damage doesn't kill Almayce.
5. Almayce probably has more charges in his wand than they have bolts.

 

[Bront]

"I know not if they intend to come back, but we should be prepaired for them in any case. I don't know if you who cast spells can rest further and regain them of if you need much longer to rest now that you have moved around. If your rest has already been desterbed enough, perhaps we best set off now and get a head start into the day, and take a longer break in the mid day to rest up if needed. Hopefully we can find a safe place to rest for the night."

Juliana feels good that Almayce feels confident in her skills, but right now she does not share his confidence, though she is lothe to admit it to a man.